Another Nine Shift prediction you will see soon: the revival of smaller cities - - provided they are on a passenger train line.

You can already see the beginnings of it in small cities like Galesburg, Illinois. In Galesburg, the train station is right downtown, surrounded by an increasingly vital business community with shops and stores and my favorite - - cobble streets.

I visited Galesburg this spring, arriving by train from Chicago on Illinois' 4th busiest train route. It is ripe for more downtown apartments, young Gen Yers raising families, and professionals and teleworkers living there for the small town atmosphere- - and going to Chicago whenever they need. We predict Galesburg, and other smaller cities located on passenger rail routes, will double or triple in population in the next 30 years.

Outsiders are expecting too much from the Wisconsin recall elections June 5.

This is a battle, not the war. And we may lose the recall election. Wisconsin is like the Russian front in WWII. We are absorbing all the casualties, fighting the Tea Party and making the rest of the nation safe for the 21st Century.

We are far better off with the recall effort than if Wisconsin folks had just accepted the right wing extremism of Governor Scott Walker. But let's wage this fight long term. Don't keep score by the inning, but by the game. Don't focus on the battle, but on the war.

Here's a related business concept to excess capacity, called collaborative consumption.

A young man in our community asked Julie and TAP, our local progressive organization, about working with young people on creating a rental store. People would loan or donate items for which they have at the house but do not use regularly, like a turkey pot, or a hole digger.

Whenever you need something, you rent it instead of buying it. Gen Y is reducing tangible goods, reducing wasteful consumption, lowering environmental pollution. This is a great exciting new idea. Go for it kids!

We heard Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens talk about the Internet beyond web 2.0 recently. He was amazing.

One of the central business and economic concepts moving forward, he says, is "excess capacity." Maximizing the use of things.

You've heard of renting a car, and now sharing a car for just a few hours. Now here's the next level: rent your own car when you are not using it. 97% of the time cars are not used, says Stephens. At Get Around, you can rent a car, but you can also rent your own car.

Want someone to do a task, or do you want to be available for hire to do a task? Try TaskRabbit.

It's not kooky, not just a fad, or even a trend. It's about reducing tangible goods. And it is changing retail, manufacturing and how tangible goods will be (long lasting, durable, not throwaway) for the rest of the century.

Not that we need to boost train ridership, which is at a record. But it does show how everything in the 21st Century is coming together, and that a big reason why Gen Y is riding trains is because, unlike driving a car, you can work and ride the train at the same time.

"In an April 13 letter to Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), Amtrak Vice President Joe McHugh said that when Wi-Fi service has been introduced elsewhere, Amtrak has documented a 3 to 5 percent ridership increase from that feature alone," as reported in Badger Rails, the newsletter of the Wisconsin Association of Railroad Passengers.

Here in River Falls, Wisc., my brilliant co-author Julie Coates has started a new grassroots organization, progressive but not partisan politically.

It is called The Awareness Project, or TAP, and they have a huge office and meeting rooms downtown where people gather for poetry readings, potlucks, organizing rallies, holding community group meetings and more. Check out their web site. Below, poster party for the rally for women's rights.